Modern Japanese Short Stories
Page 22
Presently the mixer began to slow down and eventually it came to a stop. It was time for Matsudo Yoshizō to knock off for the day. He picked up the rubber hose that was attached to the mixer and made a preliminary attempt at washing his face and hands. Then he hung his lunch box round his neck and trudged back toward his tenement. His mind was absorbed with the idea of getting some food into his stomach and, even more important, a powerful cup of rice brandy.
He passed the power plant. The construction work was almost finished: soon they would be having electricity. In the distance Mt. Keira towered in the evening darkness with its coat of pure-white snow. The man’s sweaty body was suddenly gripped by the cold and he began to shiver. Next to where he walked the rough waters of the Kiso River bit into the milky foam with a barking roar.
“Damn it all!” thought Matsudo Yoshizō. “It’s too much. Yes, it’s too damned much! The old woman’s pregnant again.”
He thought of the six children who already squirmed about their tenement room, and of the new child who was going to be born just as the cold season was coming on, and of his wife who seemed to give birth pell-mell to one baby after another; and he was sick at heart.
“Let’s see now,” he muttered. “They pay me one yen ninety sen a day, and out of that we have to buy two measures of rice at fifty sen each, and then we have to pay out another ninety sen for clothing and a place to live. Damn it all! How do they expect me to have enough left over for a drink?”
Abruptly he remembered the little box in his pocket. He took it out and rubbed it against the seat of his trousers to clean off the cement. Nothing was written on the box. It was securely sealed.
“Now, why the hell should anyone want to seal a box like this? He likes to act mysterious, whoever he is.”
He hit the box against a stone, but the lid still would not open. Thoroughly exasperated, he threw it down and stepped on it furiously. The box broke and on the ground lay a scrap of paper wrapped in a rag. He picked it up and read:
“I am a factory girl working for the Nomura Cement Company. I sew cement-bags. My boyfriend used to work for the same company. His job was to put stones into the crusher. Then on the morning of October 7th, just as he was going to put in a big rock, he slipped on the mud and fell into the crusher underneath the rock.
“The other men tried to pull him out, but it was no use. He sank down under the rock, just as if he was being drowned. Then the rock and his body were broken to pieces and came out together from the ejector looking like a big flat pink stone. They fell onto the conveyor belt and were carried into the pulverizer. There they were pounded by the huge steel cylinder. I could hear them screaming out some sort of a spell as they were finally crushed to bits. Then they were put into the burner and baked into a fine slab of cement.
“His bones, his flesh, his mind had all turned into powder. Yes, my boyfriend ended up entirely as cement. All that was left was a scrap of material from his overalls. Today I’ve been busy sewing the bags into which they’ll put him.
“I’m writing this letter the day after he became cement, and when I’ve finished I’m going to stick it into the bag in this barrel.
“Are you a workman, too? If you are, have a heart and send me an answer. What is the cement in this barrel used for? I very much want to know.
“How much cement did he become? And is it all used in the same place or in different places? Are you a plasterer or a builder?
“I couldn’t bear to see him become the corridor of a theater or the wall of some large mansion. But what on earth can I do to stop it? If you are a workman, please don’t use the cement in such a place….
“On second thought, though, it doesn’t matter. Use it wherever you want. Wherever he’s buried, he’ll make a good job of it. He’s a good solid fellow and he’ll do the right thing wherever he happens to end up.
“He had a very gentle nature, you know. But at the same time he was a brave, husky fellow. He was still young. He’d only just turned twenty-five. I never had time to find out how much he really loved me. And here I am sewing a shroud for him—or rather, a cement-bag. Instead of going into a crematorium, he ended up in a rotation kiln. But how shall I find his grave to say goodbye to him? I haven’t the faintest idea where he’s going to be buried, you see. East or west, far or near—there’s no way of telling. That’s why I want you to send me an answer. If you’re a workman, you will answer me, won’t you? And in return I’ll give you a piece of cloth from his overalls—yes, the piece of cloth this letter’s wrapped in. The dust from that rock, the sweat from his body—it’s all gone into this cloth. The cloth is all that’s left of those overalls he used to wear when he embraced me—oh, how hard he used to embrace me!
“Please do this for me, won’t you? I know it’s a lot of trouble, but please let me know the date when this cement was used, and the sort of place it was used in and the exact address—and also your own name. And you’ll be careful too, won’t you? Goodbye.”
* * *
The din of the children once more surged about Matsudo Yoshizō. He glanced at the name and address at the end of the letter and gulped down the rice brandy that he had poured into a teacup.
“I’m going to drink myself silly!” he shouted. “And I’m going to break every damned thing I can lay my hands on.”
“I see,” said his wife. “So you can afford to get drunk, can you? And what about the children?”
He looked at his wife’s bloated stomach and remembered his seventh child.
THE CHARCOAL BUS
BY Masuji Ibusé
TRANSLATED BY Ivan Morris
Masuji Ibusé, who was born in 1898, started his literary career as a poet. Although he soon switched to fiction and essays, the strength, restraint, and economy of his prose style reveals the poetic influence. His first published prose work, “The Giant Salamander” (Sanshouo), appeared in 1932; like “The Charcoal Bus,” it is a sustained satire, and it is marked by a dry form of humor that characterizes much of Ibusé’s writing. In the early 1930s Ibusé joined a group of authors who aimed both to free literature from the dominance of the proletarian writers, and at the same time to avoid retiring into an ivory tower by concentrating exclusively on stylistic perfection. This no doubt worthy movement was short lived, and it was in fact not until after the war that Ibusé’s position in the world of letters was confirmed.
Ibusé is known, on the one hand, for his historical works, which reveal the influence of the great Meiji writer Ōgai Mori, and on the other, for his realistic stories and novels of contemporary life. His writing is outstanding for its fine style and for its characteristic form of humor. He is not a humorous writer in the conventional sense: but an indirect and subtle humor pervades his novels and short stories and, among other things, serves to prevent his warm, often moving, accounts of the hardships of poor people’s lives from lapsing into sentimentality. Ibusé’s short stories are marked by a very special type of irony, sharp without being bitter, subtle without being pretentious, and also by a distinctive manner of conveying the savor of real life through the slightly distorted words and actions of the characters.
“The Charcoal Bus” (Noriai Jidosha) was first published in 1952, when the author was fifty-four. It may be read as a political satire, with the driver representing Japan’s militarist leaders and the passengers the grumbling but obedient civilian population. The honeymoon couple may stand for the noncooperative minority and the four-mile stretch of road brings to mind the four-year stretch of war following Pearl Harbor. The remarks of the old man in a peasant smock provide a pungent comment on the “reverse course” trends in recent Japanese politics.
ON A RECENT TRIP to the country, I rode once again on the Binan-line bus. I hadn’t been on this bus for some time—not since the war, in fact. However, I remembered it well.
During the war, all the country buses were pretty decrepit, but the bus on the Binan route was in a class of its own. It rarely got through a run without a series of mishaps
: first there would be a puncture, then the engine would break down, and when this had finally been repaired the gear box would give trouble. Almost all the windows were broken; some of the openings were covered with cellophane, others with wooden boards.
Now, five years after the war, the bus still ran on charcoal, though the body had been painted over and most of the windows repaired. The driver was a young fellow whom I recognized from the war days, when he had been the conductor. Apparently he had changed places with the mustachioed man who had previously occupied the driver’s seat. I wondered whether this had any particular significance.
“Haven’t the driver and the conductor switched round?” I said to a woman in the seat next to mine. “Surely this conductor used to be the driver. Has he had an accident or something so that he can’t drive any longer?”
“No,” put in the woman’s companion, “he became unpopular during the war and had to be demoted. He was too strict with the passengers, you see. As soon as the war was over, people began to write the company complaining about his behavior and saying he should be purged… Well, this is where we get off.”
The couple nodded to me and left the bus. An old man in a peasant’s smock, who had been listening to the conversation, took the woman’s place beside me.
“That’s all very well,” he said as soon as he had sat down, “but the conductor will soon be back where he was before, mark my words. Of course, he was so unpopular after the war that they couldn’t help purging him; they lowered his salary and made him a conductor. But nowadays the purgees are all coming back into favor. It’s people like him who are going to get ahead now.” The old man nodded his head and murmured, as if to himself: “Yes, that’s how things are moving these days.”
I glanced at the conductor. How well I remembered that little mustache! He was standing now at the back of the bus looking out the window. We crossed a bridge over a dried-up river; beyond the rice fields I could see the slopes of a barren-looking mountain. As we passed a Shinto shrine by the side of the road, the conductor removed his cap and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. As he did so, he bowed his head slightly, and I wondered whether this was intended as a mark of respect for the shrine. Such reverence had been unfashionable for some time after the war but was now gradually coming back into favor. The conductor’s gesture seemed deliberately ambiguous.
My memories of the man were far from favorable. During his long term of duty as driver for the Binan-line bus, he had never missed an opportunity to hector the young man who was then conductor. The burden of his abuse was usually the alleged misdemeanors of the passengers, and among his favorite points of attack were rucksacks.
“No rucksacks inside the bus!” he used to roar at the conductor. “Kindly tell that passenger to remove his rucksack. You know perfectly well they aren’t allowed. What are you waiting for anyhow? Make him get off!”
There was indeed a rule that each piece of luggage, including rucksacks, had to be checked, paid for, and piled on top of the bus. Occasionally the police would stop the bus at a crossroads and examine the luggage for black-market articles, such as rice or firewood, the discovery of which meant confiscation and a fine. Under the circumstances we preferred to take our baggage with us and push it under the seats, but such attempts were almost invariably frustrated by the mustachioed driver. He, on the other hand, did not scruple to transport large quantities of carrots, peas, and other contraband in the tool box next to his seat.
Not only did I and the other regular passengers regard the driver as a disagreeable bully, but we also despised him for his inefficiency in handling the bus. The constant delays and breakdowns used to leave him quite unperturbed. As soon as the engine failed, he would announce in a stentorian tone: “All passengers out! Start pushing!” When we had pushed for fifty or sixty yards, the engine usually started and he would order us aboard.
Toward the end of the war, however, these periodic breakdowns became more serious and the last time I had taken the bus (shortly before the destruction of Hiroshima) I had helped push it almost four miles. I had gone fishing in a mountain stream and after spending the night at an inn, had gone early next morning to the Otaki Bridge bus stop. About forty people were already waiting. The time for departure came but there was no sign of the bus. A few people gave up at once and left; others vented their annoyance by reviling the driver, a luxury that they certainly would not have permitted themselves had he been within earshot. Only about half of us remained when the bus finally arrived, over two hours late.
I gave the conductor my return ticket and luggage check, passed him my rucksack, and stepped aboard. There were seats for all of us. When the conductor had finished stoking the burner with charcoal, the driver pressed the starting button. Nothing happened. He pressed it again several times, but still the engine would not fire. This, of course, was a fairly normal occurrence and, without waiting to be told, we all got out of the bus—all, that is, except for a young couple who remained unconcernedly in their seats. They were obviously not familiar with the Binan-line bus.
With one accord we started to push. As the burner, which stuck out in the back, was extremely hot, we split into groups on each side. One enterprising passenger found a long board and used it to push the burner. The conductor also jumped down and began pushing. The road here was at a slight incline and the bus moved along without too much effort on our part. The driver sat calmly in his seat, hands on the steering wheel.
We had pushed the bus three or four hundred yards without the engine once firing, when suddenly we heard a hysterical voice from inside the bus. It was the driver, who evidently had just noticed the young couple.
“Hey, you two back there!” he roared. “What do you think you’re doing? Can’t you see that everyone else is pushing? Get out and lend a hand! Don’t just sit there!”
A man’s voice answered calmly: “Would you mind not shouting at me? I may not be much of a traveler, but I always thought that buses ran on their engines.”
“I see,” said the driver. “So that’s your attitude! You’re too good to push like everyone else, eh? Well, let me tell you something: I don’t care if you’re honeymooners or not, if you don’t get out this minute and start pushing, you’ll damned well wish you had!”
“If you want to continue this conversation,” answered the man, “you’d better address me politely.”
There was a pause. A little later, as the road passed through a quiet grove, the driver’s voice again broke the silence.
“Hey, you two back there! Don’t be so damned stubborn. How can you go on sitting there in comfort when all the others are sweating away on the road? We’re beginning to go uphill now. Get out and help!”
“Why don’t you pay attention to the engine?” said the young man loudly. “You’re the one that’s stubborn! You’re so interested in making us get out and push that you aren’t even trying to start the engine. Concentrate on your job like other drivers! You’re a disgrace to the public-transport system!”
‘“Shut up!” said the driver. Then in a milder tone he added: “See here, young man, we’re going up Sampun Hill now. You don’t want to let the others do all the work, do you? Look at them back there sweating away!”
Sampun Hill was a steep cutting; both sides of the road were clay cliffs. It took all our strength to move the bus. From the top of the cutting the road went steeply downward, and if the engine didn’t fire there, it was hard to see when it would. We all stopped at the summit and watched the bus gathering speed as it ran downhill. It passed a large irrigation tank on one side of the road and disappeared behind a clump of trees. We pricked up our ears for the sound of the engine, while the conductor ran down the hill after the bus.
A man in an open-neck shirt, a peaked cap, and a pair of khaki plus-fours stained with paint came up to me. “Can you hear if it’s started?” he said.
“I believe it’s started,” replied a girl in slacks who was standing next to me. “I think I can hear the engine….
But maybe it’s just my imagination.”
“I can’t hear a thing,” said the man in plus-fours. “How many more miles is it to town?”
“About four and a half,” said the girl. “But in just over two miles we come to Three Corners Crossing, where we can catch a decent bus.”
“And I’m taking that bus for the rest of the way,” declared the man in plus-fours. “I’m fed up with this charcoal contraption!”
Just then the conductor appeared at the bottom of the hill. He stood there waving his arms and shaking his head, before disappearing again in a clump of trees.
“We’ve never had to push this far before,” said the girl in slacks as we started disconsolately down the hill. “That couple has annoyed the driver. He’s taking it out on the rest of us.”
“Yes, I bet he’ll have us pushing the bus all the way to the end of the line,” said the man in plus-fours angrily. “There’s only one thing for us to do—look exhausted. We must make him think we’re on our last legs; then maybe he’ll change his mind.” He pulled his shirt out of his trousers to give himself a disheveled appearance.
Finally we caught sight of the bus parked by a farmhouse near the trees. The driver was standing beside it with arms folded, while the conductor was busily turning the handle to stoke the burner. I could see a girl in a green dress drawing water from a well.
“Isn’t that the girl who was in the bus?” I suggested.
“That’s right,” said a horse-faced man in an old army uniform with a mourning band. “I’ve got a feeling something’s gone wrong. Look, the girl’s carrying a bucket into the bus. Hey, what’s got into you?” he called out to the driver. “What are you doing, just standing there looking up at the sky? Have you decided to give up driving or what?”
“That’s right,” said the driver, fingering his mustache. “I’ve resigned.”